Paypal Currency Exchange – USD to CAD Workaround

By Sustainable PF

A lot of Canadians are making money online these days. From selling virtual gaming items to selling real world things on eBay to bloggingmany Canadian bloggers are receiving payments via Paypal. The problem for Canadians however, is that they get stuck having to pay a hefty 2.5% Paypal currency exchange fee every time they convert from USD to CAD.

2.5% may not seem like a big deal but that is $2.50 on every $100 of income. $25 on $1000 and so on. Additionally, the exchange rate has been favourable to Canadians for quite some time and $1 CAD peaked at being valued as $1.06 recently. This means that on every $100 I only receive $91.50! Ouch! It all adds up and paying the Paypal currency exchange fee is not something i’m keen to do.

You may think, “lots of Canadian banks have USD accounts, why not just sign up using one”. Well, I tried that. I had a USD account set up at CIBC from when we did our new car import of our 2011 Subaru Outback from the USA last year. I had made a few attempts link this account to Paypal but the test payments Paypal sends to confirm an account exists. Paypal couldn’t tell me why it wouldn’t work, nor could CIBC. I then tried (and failed) with my BMO USD bank account. What was I doing wrong?

My error was my use of the banks I am associated with. A quick Internet search (which should have been done first – lesson learned) revealed that the accounts I was trying to use identifiers that Paypal recognizes as Canadian. Since Paypal states that we have to transfer to Canadian dollar bank accounts they could not recognize the USD accounts.

The Paypal currency exchange solution? The Royal Bank of Canada USD account(s).

What makes Royal Bank different than it’s competitors? By using a few pieces of information / information combinations you can establish a US bank account when you register your bank for Paypal withdraws. The following outlines what you need to do to transfer US funds to your Canadian based US dollar bank account and solve your Paypal currency exchange woes.

Head to a Royal Bank branch , preferably one you can walk or bike to (may as well save gas!).

You will ask the branch officer to open a RBC US Dollar account. This account costs $2 for 6 transactions per month. There is a second option where you can open a RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account that has no fees if you can limit yourself to 1 monthly debit.

You need to remember to get all the account details before you leave. You need the transit and account numbers. You will be provided a routing number but you don’t need that particular number – see below.

Login into Paypal using your user ID and password. You will be directed to your My Accounts page.

Click Withdraw (Transfer to Bank Account).

In the Add a bank account page you’ll first need to change the country drop down from Canada to United States.

The US bank account page appears and you are so close to curing your Paypal currency exchange issues. First enter in Royal Bank of Canada into the Bank Name field.

Leave the Checking button selected if you opened a US Dollar account or Savings if you selected the High Interest eSavings account.

This step is integral. With your account you will receive the routing number of a Canadian branch (021000021) – DO NOT USE THIS NUMBER. The number you need to use is “026004093” which is the routing number of a US Branch.

You now enter in the account number. To accomplish this you need to answer the 5 digit transit number and the actual account number.

With luck you’ve set up online banking. You will need to check the account for two small deposits that Paypal will ask you to confirm the deposits. Once you do this you should be able to transfer your US dollars to your Canadian based USD account.

If you have found this advice useful and are looking to exchange $5000 or more in a single transaction I highly recommend using Knightsbridge Foreign Exchange. The FX rate they offer is usually 0.50%-0.75% which is much lower than the banks (2.5%). You can call toll free in Canada or USA at (877)-355-KBFX (5239) or email contact@knightsbridgefx.com. They will ask you where you heard of their service and if you tell them SPF or sustainablepersonalfinance.com referred you we will receive a small affiliate percentage. There will be no additional cost to yourself but I am confident you will receive excellent, professional and fast service. You can also find additional services, for example World First, that can assist with your financial transfers.

Have you been losing chunks of money due to the 2.5% Paypal currency exchange fee? What steps have you taken to reduce these fees?

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209 comments to Paypal Currency Exchange – USD to CAD Workaround

Thanks for the awesome tip. Like you, I have been getting stung. I used to be part of the Royal Bank but I left them because I got tired of their bad service and attitude. Plus their fees were really high. If this is the only way to save on Paypal fees though, I guess I might just have to go pay them a visit. Thanks for the very valuable information.

spf did provide a method of getting a $us paypal balance out of Paypal and into my canadian bank $us account—A whole new problem has arisen—paypal is automatically converting all client payments in $us into a $ca paypal balance—-simply because you have canadian paypal. This is what they are doing to me regardless my adding a us based bank account with a new york city routing number and made $us my priority payment. I had to link my visa of course but have no linked canadian bank—-still they convert all payments received and have made it more difficult to make online purchases through paypal–since i’m unable to keep a $us balance -Has this happened to many others??

Geez, that can really eat into your revenue! Being in the US, I haven’t been exposed to that issue, but can appreciate how that can impact you guys. That’s almost like an extra 2.5% tax right off the top for folks in Canada. Glad you’re able to find a resourceful workaround.

I’ve been hit with fees converting into US currency, so can somewhat relate.

Ya, CDNs get the short end of the stick on taxes and worse on our purchases. Our Subaru Outback cost 20+% less buying in the States than the same car here in Canada. And that was even with a close to pay, but not quite there, exchange rate.

Always seemed to me that Paypal charged even more than 2.5% because I always felt my credit card gave better exchange rates than Paypal. I thought I had tested this before but the numbers always favoured the credit card.

Checking their website it’s clear to see that it is listed as 2.5%. I guess you get rewards on your credit card (I’m talking for purchases) so that still beats Paypal anyday. I wonder if the spot rates they use are identical to those used by the CC companies or if they skim a little bit there somehow too?

Excellent piece of info, I as well hate those fees paid to paypal. However, I am disappointed that the solution has to pass by RBC, I just don’t like this bank and do not consider doing business with them anytime in the near future. Hopefully, another way around is found!

That was a no go for me with Scotia Bank. The Swift Code worked but combining the transit and account number did not work. I am not sure if the account numbers are unique across all transit numbers though …

Actually, the trick is to use a Swift Code. That’s the formal name of the code SPF found. I have used that with Scotia Bank to do US wire transfer from e-trade. You are essentially doing a wire transfer rather than a bank to bank transfer I believe.

The wire transfers are manually processed out of New York for Scotia Bank. I get a signed paper in the mail a week after the transfer. The Swift Code is international and all the banks should have it.

The key here that SPF found is how to trick the entry forms from Pay Pal :)

The thing is that I usually have a 10$ fee on a wire transfer at my bank though. I am trying it out now to see 1. if it works 2. if I will be charged a fee

Yes very timely read. My experience is same but have avoided some fees but withdrawing more than $150 but the exchange rate is the killer they have a hefty buffer. Fees on the way in and fees on the way out …

Yes. Last time I just put “rbc” instead of the full name but otherwise I had all the correct info. I will try again. Not sure if they lock you out after failed attempts…. I contacted the help desk via email and they said usd accounts at Canadian banks aren’t supported at this time…

Thanks so much for this tip,i’ve always want to do this and did not know how till i came across this blog,i’ve open a U.S chequing account with RBC on monday this week and i added it to my papyal the same day with all the info that was explain in this blog,and today is thursday i was able to confirm my paypal account,it only take 3 days now i’m so happy i can transfer my US money to my bank account with out being charge those exchange rate fees.Thank you

Great guide, I’ll be following it this week to avoid (or at least reduce) a lot of currency conversion expenses. I have an ING business account where I already do the conversions whenever I can. Currently ING is quoting $1.012 to buy and $0.983 to sell, which looks like a spread of 2.9 cents or a cost of 1.45% for a single conversion. Do you get a much better deal than that with knightsbridge or xetrade?

How did you land @ 1.45%? 2.9 cents on what is basically a dollar seems to be about 2.9%, no? xetrade I usually see between 1% to 1.2% knightbridge, which requires a minimum of $10k to be converted is usually around .85% or so

If you use large transactions knightsbridge is my choice. If you only need a few hundred bucks xetrade. Both require paper work which can be a pain, but, the companies have to do due diligence that you are not laundering money.

If you do sign up with Knightsbridge let them know Simon Boyce sent you. I get a tiny affiliate fee :) no cost to you of course!

I did that – first exchange went great and looks like it saved about $200! I wasn’t sure if it would work with accounts in a corporate name but there were no problems setting up the account and doing the transfer.

Thank you for your reply. I opened a USD account with RBC today, however when I entered the information on paypal as you so kindly instructed, I did not get a confirmation from paypal that they sent the deposits. Is it normal?

I was in RBC to check this out before I read your article. They claim to have a Canadian $US account and a US $US account. I am reaching 60 so the Canadian account is free but the US account has a fee. I am assuming that you are using the Canadian account and using the US transit number. I am surprised that RBC would allow that.

I got it to work after a few trial and errors! I had to use a US Paypal account (when registering, the address had to be in the States). I then transferred my USD from my Canadian Paypal account to my US Paypal account. And then withdraw from my USD Paypal account to my USD RBC savings account.

Hi thanks for this. Is the 2.5% fee ‘hidden’ in their currency conversion rate (Searching today I stumbled on a site implying that, I can paste the link but don’t want to spam) or is it on top of it? Reason I ask is when I tried to withdraw today and used the currency converter (on the page where you enter the withdrawal amount) it was almost exactly 2.5% less than reported on business sites.

I was wondering if the workaround is still working? Has anybody done it lately? Also, if you are indicating that the bank is in the US, does this mean the PayPal info will be sent to the IRS and what kind of tax implications will this have?

Thanks for the feedback, disappointing as it is. Any advise on the best bank to use for small business and how to handle a business that charges in US$? Do I just have to suck up paypal’s 2.5? Would it be worth my while registering my business in the US too since I need to submit returns for the US anyway

Just a heads up to anybody still trying to figure this out: if it wasn’t working before for anybody, then I would suggest giving it another try. It’s working again.

I went through the entire process in the last couple of weeks. For a while, PayPal wouldn’t let me add a “USA” account. This past Friday, I decided to give it another shot and adding the account finally worked. I confirmed my deposits on Monday and then did a test transfer of $50 to my eSavings account. The amount showed up a few hours ago.

Hi Kevin. Can you confirm Paypal transfers to your RBC esavings are still working? I’d be looking to do this with a low 5 figure amount but of course want to hopefully verify the process works before opening the RBC account. Is that amount in line with what you’re transferring? Ty.

You can walk out of any Canadian RBC branch with US cash physically in your hand and take it to any currency exchange business that you wish to deal with. There are many to choose from that beat the bank’s rates. With my RBC US account, I’m allowed one withdraw per month without any charge.

I have been using Kantor to exchange into Canadian funds.

I have been doing this monthly now for years – thanks to this article.

this article is great but works against itself. its the first thing to pop up on google when you type in “paypal exchange cad usd”, which everyone does since paypal doesnt show xchange rates on their website. so rbc or paypal will see this article and fix their loophole. time to delete this article

I’m trying the following US routing number for TD CanadaTrust – 026009593 – that is the BOA (Bank of America) number for wire transfers from the US to my TD US$ account. Then I put the branch number and account number as a single long string of digits and PayPal seemed to accept it as a US bank.

I have both a US$ and Can$ account on PayPal, I use PayPal US (.com) and not any other. I also have a US shipping address that is registered with PayPal.

So, we shall see if this works, but it won’t be until sometime next week as I wasn’t prepared to give PayPal my login info for my TD account and opted for the small deposit option. I’m doing this on a Saturday and it takes a few days to go through the system…I’ll report back if I get a chance…

This may also work for Euros – but you will have to figure out the Euro routing number, etc. on your own.

So far no success with my tests. As far as I can see I have to setup an account with TD Bank (the US physical bank ) and then figure out how to transfer the funds from there to Canada. Not as tidy as I would have liked at all, and not worth the hassle. Still, I think it should work – perhaps someone else can build from my experience, but I have to get back to my shop work.

Now that the Canadian dollar value has dropped relevant to USD, I thought this would be a good time to transfer some USD to Can $. When I recently moved $1000 USD to my Canadian bank account I thought I was getting a nice exchange rate “bonus” when about $1200 showed up in my bank account. Today I looked at my paypal balance and see that they withdrew the $1200 from my balance, which does not make sense to me! Am I all backwards on this exchange thing or did I get ripped off??? Please RSVP to my email address in case i miss this if you have an answer.

Has anyone figured out how to make this work with Scotiabank as well? I would eventually need this money in a scotiabank USD account so it would be a pain to have to transfer paypal to RBC to Scotiabank.

Also has anyone set up the RBC account with paypal lately? Reading forums it sounds like it’s been on and off.

An update on my Paypal withdrawal and RBC account set up. This solution worked great for a larger transfer for me, Txs Sustainable. I actually went with the US Direct Checking option that was offered even though its a few extra $s a month. I choose figuring the Canadian checking option would work, but the US one might have the best chance. It also allows me to withdrawal US $s from US basd RBC ATMs, which should balance out the extra monthly charges if I make a trip or two each year.

Another way for Canadians to save money when transferring money internationally is to open up a CANADIAN FOREX account online. You pay a flat $15 fee for the transaction (if it is under $10,000) plus the exchange rate and that is all. Clean and simple. No hidden fees. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to make a $5700 USD payment to Israel for the past month. Reading blogs about loopholes on PayPal, exchange rates, international cross-border fee, commission fees, conversion fees, ETC ETC. After reviewing numerous methods posted by other people trying to save money I realized that Canadian Forex is the absolute best method. Even with a Chase MasterCard, PayPal charges the recepient or sender 3.5% + 30 cents for what they call a cross-border fee. Canadian Forex doesn’t. Just another suggestion that I hope helps you fellow Canadians save. We always get burned financially. It’s so unfair.

The exchange rate for converting from US to Canadian funds as priced by PayPal is about the same rate you get from your bank when converting US to Canadian funds.

Try this the next time you want to withdraw money from PayPal, note the exchange rate – do a similar setup of the transaction at your bank’s online site. I think you might well find that PayPal is about the same or possibly slightly better than the bank exchange rate for converting US to CDN $.

This is not of much comfort if you want to simply move USD from PayPal to your USD Canadian bank account…

I have been charged the PayaPal Currency Exchange Fee for two decades. Imagine how much money was wasted. I will try opening up an account with the Royal Bank and registering the account with PayPal. How easy is it to transfer money from the Royal Bank account to my account at another bank? Many thanks.

I’m in Canada. An American online vendor I have been dealing with for years has forced customers to use Paypal for payment. The Vendor charged me in $CAN. Paypal charged me slightly for than 2.5% more than that amount to pay the vendor in USD.

If I understand this workaround correctly, the USD RBC account will be linked to my Paypal account and, as long as there are funds in that account, and I instruct Paypal to obtain the funds from that account, I will also avoid the fees like those just described?

Also, as Canadians, are we permitted by Paypal to have linked, for example, a Canadian bank account, a Canadian credit card, AND a USD account simultaneously?

If I understand this workaround correctly, the USD RBC account will be linked to my Paypal account and, as long as there are funds in that account, and I instruct Paypal to obtain the funds from that account, I will also avoid the fees like those just described?

If you are moving money from the USD RBC account into your Paypal you should incur no fees that I know of. That being said, I rarely fund my Paypal account – I withdraw funds from it. Prior to making an attempt Paypal will present the entire financial terms of the transaction. This would be the same with any bank account linked to Paypal – all of this to the best of my knowledge.

Also, as Canadians, are we permitted by Paypal to have linked, for example, a Canadian bank account, a Canadian credit card, AND a USD account simultaneously?

I do not know the official Paypal policy on this. I have the above all linked in my account right now and have not had issues for quite a few years now (4+). But again, I do not know what the official Policy states. If you happen to learn it please return and share the knowledge!

After a lot of hassle I finally set up a US high interest eSavings account. I sent my $2100 USD from paypal to my RBC account and it all showed up just fine. When I went to withdraw the cash (today), the exchange rate was 1.2583. I checked with PayPal (again, today) and the exchange rate is 1.26204.

This method cost me $10 and several hours of my life. Would not recommend.

I want to give a big THANK YOU to you. I set up my bank account on Thursday last week, made the transfer to RBC from my PayPal account the same day and the funds literally showed up on Friday and I made a withdrawal. It was a seamless process from start to finish it took me 35 minutes and that included walking to the branch to open the account! Plus my Paypal Business name and my RBC bank account names are different and it went through fine. Now I just need to figure out the foreign exchange currency.

All my regular banking is done through TD but I have an ING now Tangerine bank account and thought I would do the transfer through them. Do you have any thoughts about using them for foreign exchange?

As mentioned in the article, I don’t use a bank for my F/X transactions. I use Knightsbridge, regularly enough, that opening an account with them is worth it. I think I have paid . I am not sure ING is even doing F/X. And the big banks will all take 2-3% (of your money) to do the conversion, from my experience.

Take a look at the last italicized paragraph of the article for my opinion on getting less than 1% F/X rate charges. Yes, you will need to make an account and prove you aren’t trying to launder money, but if you make a few transactions the savings really add up.

Feel free to send me an email via my contact page as well if you need more information – happy to help!

In case anyone is wondering, this still works! Just follow the steps exactly how they are. I did it with my RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account. Don’t forget the 5 digit transit number before you enter your account number, as it only asks for the “account number” on the paypal website. No spaces or hyphens either. Good luck!

1. Click “Link a Bank Account” 2. On the page that says “Choose from one of these common banks” Select “I have a different bank” 3. On the next page, change the Country to United States. 4. Under “Bank Name” Type in “Royal Bank of Canada” 5. Choose checking or savings account. I did it with my RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account 6. Using routing number 026004093 7. Under account number, you include the 5 digit transit number first, then the actual account number. No spaces, no dashes! Just one long continuous number Note for #7: When you login to online banking on the RBC website. On the “Accounts Summary” page, you should see your RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account. The first 5 digits beside that account are the transit number. Then there is a dash, then the account number. Those are all the numbers you need. 8. You should be all set! They will then make 2 small deposits to your account. It took 3 business days for me. Then you verify those deposits on your paypal account.

Ben, open the RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account. There is no monthly fee. you just only get 1 debit/withdrawal per month included. Trust me, it works with that account and you will save some fees! If you use the Kinghtsbridge FX trade (minimum $5000 transaction though) you can work around that 1 debit limit per month. They withdraw the funds from the US account, and deposit it in Canadian to the account of your choice.

does this only work with an RBC USD account for some reason? I have a USD Savings account at Tangerine but it does not seem to have the requisite 9 digit routing code. any suggestions? (I’ve got $1000 USD sitting in Paypal and I am going to lose about 4-5% converting it to CAD, due to Paypals egregiously bad fx rates.)

First failure was because I didn’t include the transit number in my account number.

Corrected that and Paypal seemed to be doing it’s thing but it failed again. Possible sources are error could be: 1) I used my own name for the bank “RBC USD” 2) I might have specified Savings instead of Chequing. The name of the account is “eSavings” but when I login I see that the account is actually labeled “Chequing” 3. the account balance is currently zero and so if there are fees involved in receiving those test payments from Paypal, RBC might have rejected them because they couldn’t cover the fees.

Speaking with the bank now (RBC) they say that there are no fees charged on a wire of under $50 (so possible error 3 should not be a factor) They did though say that the routing number they thought I should be using was 021000021 (but I am sticking with the 026004093 reported here as working)

They also confirmed that this is a Chequing account (and I might have specified “Savings” based on the “eSavings” name of the account.)

So I am trying again specifying the exact bank name “Royal Bank of Canada” and “Chequing”

However, now, on retrying, I am getting a message from Paypal saying “You cannot add a bank at this time”. What’s up with THAT now?

Peter: First things first, you should not be contacting the bank regarding these matters – fly under the radar – these websites alone might draw too much attention and ruin a great thing for all of us. Secondly, when logging on to paypal.com make sure that you choose the correct bank (choose bank/I have a different bank) and make sure that you choose United States. Do not choose RBC on the first page. Enter the bank’s name as Royal Bank of Canada. I am pretty sure that I checked off savings account – not checking. Use the correct routing number 026004093. Make certain that the account you have with RBC is a RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings account – that is the one that works.

Thanks Tom I did not mention Paypal at all in my conversation with RBC. So I don’t think they are alarmed (and I don’t think that RBC would be the problem anyway. The trouble would be with Paypal I expect.)

Though RBC did require me to physically visit a branch last week to provide IDs etc. so I do not believe this can be done completely online

I have confirmed that I opened correct account “RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings”

The problem seems now to be with Paypal. For some reason they are giving me an error message “You cannot add a bank at this time”

I was about to call Paypal to try to understand that but I expect THEY are the operation we don’t want to tip off (Paypal are the people taking advantage of their inflexibility and outrageously bad FX rates).

Calling them could well be a red flag that we are all trying this work-around that they don’t want to be available.

So, I’ll hold off on calling Paypal for the moment in the hopes that someone here can guide me around this “cannot add a bank at this time” roadblock.

“Ok folks, I finally got this working after months of trying (I opened the no-fee USD Savings account with RBC). This is how to get it to work… If you get the “You Cannot Add a Bank Account at this Time” yellow error window which appears at the top of the screen when you have tried to submit the bank details, it is actually due to a security block on your Paypal account (which is fairly standard). I only learnt this when I tried Adding an Account live with a Paypal assistant over the phone. He could see the error message I generated as I submitted the form (and gets more info as to why – which Paypal doesn’t give us as the customer). So if you get this error message, get on the phone to Paypal. The initial person you will speak to isn’t a specialist (don’t waste you time with them as they will tell you “you can’t do that”), so ask to speak to someone about “improving currency rates” or “business accounts”. Explain to this specialist person that you are trying to link your USD account with RBC in Canada. They will ask for your account details. Then try to add the bank account. They should see the security block. They should then manually lift this block. As soon as he did that, it let me submit the account, and I am now waiting for the test transaction to verify the account. Finally! Phew! (Note: if you speak to a specialist and they say you can’t do it, tell them you are going to close your Paypal account unless they sort it. Worked for me).”

I didn’t bother reading the rest of the message thread, but I hope it helps. I probably would state to the Paypal rep that the RBC was a Canadian bank physically located in the states. – sort of like the American TD banks…

Thanks Tom. I did call Paypal last night and it did indeed seem to be a block on my account (likely for having made 2 failed attempts to link that RBC account)

They didn’t seem to have any particular concern and they just reloaded the link request. (Turns out on my 2nd try I had specified SAVINGS when in fact this eSavings account is actually a CHECKING account.)

We’ll now see if third time lucky the confirmation deposits finally hit the account. I’ll report back on the results.

Hmmm, well it’s been a week since I spoke to Paypal and had them relaunch the verification deposits. But nothing has appeared in my RBC account as yet. Something is not working right. RBC tells me that this account cannot accept a direct deposit, only a wire. (But I am never confident these CS reps know what they are talking about.)

I don’t know what to do next or how anyone else has recently managed to make this work.

To confirm, I set up my account with these parameters: Location: United States Name: Royal Bank Routing: 026004093 (as the instructions here explicitly state, even though RBC says the correct routing number should be 021000021) Account type: Chequing (this account shows as Chequing even though the name is “RBC U.S. High Interest eSavings”) Account number: 06702452xxxx (my bank’s 5 digit transit number + my 7 digit account code.

when you called what did you tell them? I tried calling them, and all they would do was set it up as a Canadian account, even tho I told them it was a US account and gave them routing number 026004093.

november 2015 and it still works. I did not even have to wait till I had money is paypal, just added the account selecting us bank, writing in Royal Bank of Canada (choose option to enter bank name manually) entering the routing code. I already had an RBC online acct so I was able to add the US high interesr esavings online too. took all of 8 minutes between setting both up. now just awaiting the verification deposits.

PayPal’s transaction fees are changing in the first quarter of this year for Canadians selling to US customers. It will be nearly 5% for most people with the flat 1% additional fee. This does not include a conversion rate markup. I don’t do enough business with US customers paying via PayPal to know whether this is significantly worse than the present situation. Can anyone comment? The answer may render this thread irrelevant for excessive US to Canada Paypal transaction fees.

Wow and bloody WOW,WOW again! To just say this worked for me, if so very far from the gratitude I feel having now jumped through this rather simple hoop of using RBC. Two days ago I drove…. sorry it’s winter and well past my marathon running… I drove into the city and while it took some 35 minutes to set up the US$ Saving A/C I ran a few more errands, headed home and then moved through the PPal process as outlined and added my info. PP accepted the info and as part of that I accepted an automated phone call to verify…. non-cabron based person — I typed in the 4 no’s and it was accepted. Just a Day and 1/2 later — (hour or so ago) I logged on to my new RBC a/c and Woppeee…. there was the two small deposits from PPF….. all of 0.09 ¢ in each a/c. Logged out then into my PP a/c and located the relevant section for withdrawal and saw the CONFIRM highlighted next to RBC, clicked it and it asked me to enter the two amounts as shown… i.e. 0.09 (had to be exactly as shown in RBC a/c) . DId that and BINGO i was set to go. How the heck did our Genie come to know the swift a/c number for the US RBC is not known and don’t care. Thanks a Bundle for the info. TIred bloody tired of being ‘ripped off’ by feeBay then it’s affiliate PP’ twice then again with the exchange rate. Where do I send the case of wine?

THE PROOF is indeed within what you see on your RBC US$ Saving A/C. I have been waiting for the final PROOF as it were, i.e. a transfer of US$ from PP to my ‘new escape route’ into that A/C. Well I had checked it twice today and now it’s 3rd time lucky. Behold, there before me was the $100.00– now $100.18 –tks to PP — total. I am truly grateful. I have already had this weekend made as a Great Weekend. Phew and Wooopee . . . all at once. Muchas Gracias, Merci Beaucoup !

Spent half a month trying to get a US funds Canadian account into paypal before realizing it wasn’t possible. Then Paypal telling me I need to open a US paypal account and then me figuring out I need a US address and then them telling me it’s not possible and there is no workaround.

Just signed up for an RBC US high interest savings account and we’ll see if the funds deposit in the next couple of days.

Does the eSaving account able to transfer fund to the paypal account? I have the paypal account linked to eSaving as I confirmed the two small deposit, but when I attempted to move money from eSaving to paypal, it failed.

2 months now into paypal support and I still haven’t been able to transfer funds from my bank account to Paypal but the account is verified fine and works the opposite way.

They give me some new reason everytime that it isn’t working including… “try another browser and call back in a week when it fails” and “try a smaller amount” and “try an even smaller amount”, “clap your hands 3 times and spin around in your seat, then hit add money”.

UPDATE: well, after calling Royal Bank AGAIN, I asked them to confirm the type of account this eSavings account is. Apparently even though it shows as a “Chequing” account in my Accounts Summary, it is in fact a “Savings ” account. (This is all very confusing) So, while confusing, this might be the problem. I am calling Paypal now to ask that they RElaunch the confirmation deposits but specifying Savings instead of Chequing. I’ll report on my progress.

OK, Paypal made the switch but interestingly instead of reissuing the small confirmation deposits, they just said “Ok, that account is now confirmed and ready to use”. I am still not clear how they know I didn’t mess up on the account numbers or transit number.

Oh well, here goes nothing. I’ve requested a full withdrawl of the USD balance of my Paypal account. Given that nothing else has worked smoothly with this Paypal-RBC USD account connection so far, we’ll see if the funds actually arrive in my account.

Hi Guys , Do i need to have US paypal account to do the transfer to RBC US account??. Apparently, i opened US account with CIBC and it didn’t work. CIBC told me i might need to open US paypal account to hook it up with UScibc account.

SPF, I have a question. I have both US account (Bank of America) and Canadian accounts (BMO and Tangerine). I recently realized that PayPal does not transfer at the exchange rate that is supposed to be. For instance, I deposited 600 USD to my PayPal account from Bank of America. On the transferred day, it was supposed to be around $780 CAD but it appeared to be around $750 on my PayPal account after the deposit was done. So how does your method solve this problem? Cause I already see the ‘deduction’ of around $20 on PayPal even before I transfer the money to my Canadian account from PayPal. ‘Adding Money’ on Paypal is basically transferring money from your bank account to PayPal and ‘Withdraw’ is transferring that money to your account. I am just a little confused so I want to clarify.

Ok–latest news on the $us out of paypal and into rbc $us account in Canada via New York city routing number —i HAVE A CONFIRMED RBC $US high interest savings account with Paypal–received the 2 deposits–was linked and actually withdrew my $us balance successfully. However-even after acknowledging the USA based branch—it doesn’t stop paypal from converting every clients payment in $us into $ca simply because you are a Canadian addressed account—-In essence if you are Canadian–you can no longer hold a $us balance—-Loophole closed–PAYPAL WINS!!???

The currency is set up priority $us—The account is a $us account and is confirmed, I have managed to withdraw 5k $us balance to my rbc $us account in Canada–but because i have a paypal canada account—all my clients paying in $us have had their payments conveerted to $ca I am unable to maintain a $us dollar account balance because i’m canadian –bottom line. This really affects my ability to purchase stateside via paypal—and it’s crazy to re-convert to $us to do business–that would be a double hit at rip off rates. This is something new Paypal has employed in the last 3 weeks and i suppose Canadians that use Paypal will just have to suck it up—Brent

Yes you can follow the work around steps and be successful in linking the account —great to move your $us to your canadian rbc account on a withdrawal of existing $us account balance. Hoever paypal has taken steps to convert all client payments in $us into $ca—making it impossible to have a $us balance in your account unless you welcome a double hit to get things back to $us—As you can guess the rates are hugely favoring Paypal—If someone has a work around for canadians with paypal wanting their balnces and client payments kept in $us—i’d like to hear from you!

Assuming I’m understanding you correctly, I haven’t found this to be true. I had two Americans send me funds, in USD, for online purchases and both arrived in my Paypal account as USD. I then transferred them, as USD, to my US account at Banner Bank (WA state). Paypal took their percentage, of course, but this is standard and did not include a forex fee.

This has just recently happened to me. Ive been using Paypal for over 10 years and have always received my US funds as US funds but this week for the first time my last two payments have been automatically converted to Canadian. I called PayPal and they mentioned they are having some glitches in their system and will notify me once its been rectified. Not sure how long this will take.

I had Paypal IT people correct the auto converting and then it happened once again. This time around customer service suggested that i change my preferences. I responded that i had preferences set to accepting $us only. I went to money preference>getting paid>block payments>update>allow different currency and convert to $us.—–Didn’t make a whole lot of sense since i had preferred payment in $us already—-BUT–it worked and all payments come through in $us now

I was going to explore this with RBC but then discovered global money transfer available though my CIBC with is now setup and works nicely to move money over 3-4 business days from Canada to my US account in california at the bank rate, not the paypal rate. No need to use Paypal as the middle man anymore!

I’m with cibc as well and made a bank to bank transfer(no fees) converted to $au quite reasonable i thought. I did make the mistake of transferring a “care package ” to daughter in Australia via Paypal—needed it expediated but did i ever pay for it!.Small amounts don’t hurt too much –but with larger sums you will take a real beating with paypal fees.

Hmm… I just set up a Canadian $US account through Scotiabank but thought I’d check out this workaround. Using a US transit code (or whatever) doesn’t sound ethical to me. I’m just going to have to suck it up and pay the fee for accepting $US and hope I can write off that fee at tax time.

Hi everyone, thank you very much for sharing the workaround information for linking your Canadian Paypal account with a $US account in RBC bank (Canada).This is very helpful for avoiding those currency conversion fees Paypal charge, but I am not a fan of RBC myself. Just personal preference…

I just wanted to share with you that recently I switched to BMO from CIBC and found out that is possible to link your $US savings account at BMO with Paypal Canada with no trouble… I tried doing this before with a $US account I have with CIBC and no luck there… Is there anyone else banking with BMO who have tried this and also worked?

I had this set up with my RBC US high interest savings account for a year and a half and it was working flawlessly until last week. Now all of my transfers to my account are being rejected by RBC. Neither Paypal, nor RBC is being at all helpful at figuring out why this is happening. The best advice they can give is to unlink and re-link the account in paypal, which I guess I’m going to try. I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and maybe RBC is cracking down or something.

Just as a follow up to this comment, I have just been told by an RBC representative that their policies have changed regarding these US accounts and that I’ll have to go to a branch and fill out a direct deposit form and give to paypal? Not really sure what’s up with all that all of a sudden, but I guess that’s my next move. Hopefully it’s all straight forward and I can get this set up again, I’ll keep y’all posted.

Sorry for so many posts, but I just have another update after talking to Paypal. I decided to call them again after hearing that I have to go into RBC to get some kind of form. The Paypal rep was very nice and she read through a description of this issue that’s been documented with Paypal as I guess the problem is becoming widespread. Apparently, the information for these USD linked accounts was incorrect and RBC was manually correcting the information on each transfer. RBC has decided to stop doing these manual corrections and instead force the customer to properly link the account to Paypal. I’m not sure why RBC couldn’t just give me the information over the phone that I need, but I have a bad feeling about this. I’m guessing that when I go into my branch to get the correct information, they’ll either tell me that I can’t link my canadian based US dollar account to a Canadian paypal account, or they will give me some routing number that will not work for setting up the account in paypal. I fear this workaround may be coming to an end. I would really like to hear if others are experiencing difficulties with RBC.

Hi Loren, The same thing is happening to me with my RBC USD linked account. Unfortunately, it is also happening with my RBC Bank USD domiciled account. Were you able to obtain the necessary form from RBC? Any information you have would be appreciated.

Alas, I have some humble admissions. First, I didn’t go into the branch to get the forms, I just read on the internet that many people were now having problems with the old workaround, so as described below, I opened an RBC Bank USA account, with the reasons all outlined in detail also below. My confirmation of the RBC Bank USA account worked just fine, and I confirmed my paypal account using the two small amounts that were deposited. However, when I tried to actually withdraw money to the account, it came back again as returned. Irritated, called RBC bank, who told me it should have worked just fine. I called Paypal and after a long and frustrating conversation, they finally looked into it deeper and found that the reason my withdrawals were being refused is that my paypal address did not match the address I had associated with my bank account. I have two mailing addresses… one for my house and one for a P.O. box I have. Because I was always having to switch during paypal checkouts, I switched my default address to the other one a while ago. So, I fixed that and decided to try to withdraw to my RBC Royal Bank high interest esavings account again to see if that was the original problem, and lo and behold it was. So I’ve rambled on here for nothing, it seems. however, in my google efforts, I’m still convinced that this workaround may be coming to an end. I’m going to keep my RBC Bank USA account that I just opened for the reasons I listed below as it adds some convenience for me for my trips to the USA. I sincerely apologize to all that have ready my ramblings here stating that this no longer works as it still worked for me after I corrected my address to the one that matches the one with the bank.

Thanks for clarifying. I contacted Paypal again. This time the agent said I should try changing my address. I’ve always used my PO Box and this is the address that the banks have as well. I guess some things have changed between RBC and TD and Paypal’s partner bank (Wells Fargo). PO Boxes are no longer acceptable. You need a physical address. With that knowledge, I changed my mailing address to my physical address, with the PO Box on the second line….Voila! Withdrawal processed to my TD Bank (George) account. Just waiting to see if a similar withdrawal will go through to RBC Bank.

Confirmed that now that my address is correct, withdrawals work to both my RBC Royal bank account (Canada) and my RBC Bank account (USA) once I corrected my paypal default address to match the address associated with the bank accounts. I think I’ll still keep the RBC bank account open for now for the added features mentioned when travelling to the US. All of these posts could have been avoided if the first Paypal rep I talked to would have just dug into it more and told me what the second one told me about the address.

Note also that after browsing the internet, it seems like Amazon sellers, who were also using this workaround have run into the same issue that it no longer works with RBC. Many are posting that you now have to open an RBC USA account, link your paypal or amazon to that account for transferring funds, then do a transfer between your RBC USA account and your RBC Canada high interest US savings account (which apparently is easy and seamless).

Well, I applied for the RBC Bank USA checking account (3.95 per month) online with not much difficulty. Requires a signature card and IRS form (formality to declare your tax exempt status with them that is filed with the bank and not the IRS). I applied on Friday and was approved on Monday, when they gave me the routing number and account number. I set up the account in my paypal wallet and the two small deposits went through and I was able to confirm them today in paypal. Also, I was able to link both the RBC Bank USA account and the RBC Royal Bank USD account through the RBC Bank USA online banking so I can easily transfer USD from one account to the other with no fees. Other than the $3.95 per month, which is a bit of a piss off, it all seems pretty good. I travel to the USA a lot, so the ability to use the debit card in gas pumps and POS machines and ATM’s in the US is going to be a bonus for me. I also will be able to transfer funds to my friends in Texas as I impose on them sometimes to do things for me. I actually don’t mind the monthly fee to get these extra features.

Yes, unfortunately. I guess there wasn’t previously, but there is now. For their basic chequing account, you pay USD $3.95 (paperless) per month (not bad) and you get 10 monthly debit transactions free, then $1 per transaction after that. No interest earned on balance, $50 minimum deposit to open. There’s also a premium account option for $9.95 per month (or $99.95 per year), unlimited transactions and interest on balance.

Downside to this method: you need to open two accounts instead of one. Also, you’re potentially involved with the IRS now, but I don’t really believe that’s going to be the case for most people. If you’re doing a huge amount of business in the U.S. and are going to be transferring paypal balances to RBC Bank USA and then to RBC Royal bank, then it might gain the attention of the IRS. There are income tax treaties between the two countries to ensure you don’t get taxed on the same income twice, but you’d have to consult a cross border tax accountant / consultant to make sure you’re doing things the right way. You should be doing that anyway if you’re doing a lot of business there.

Upside to this method: You can obtain a debit card (and credit card too if you want) from RBC Bank USA for this account that will work in ATM’s, gas pumps and point of sale debit machines in the U.S. You would be able to pay off the Credit card (if you choose to get one) balance from the chequing account. As well, many online purchase from the US can only be made with a U.S. credit card, so that’s another benefit. Additionally, you can link both your RBC Royal bank High interest USD account to your Royal Bank USA chequing account through the same internet banking login (from either side) and transfer between accounts without fees.

I haven’t gone to RBC Royal Bank Canada to see what they say yet, but I will in the next week or so. Apparently, you can open the RBC Bank USA from the RBC Royal bank Canada branches or you can do it online. I imagine if you do it online, you’ll still have to go into a branch to verify the account and make the USD $50 deposit before they’ll activate it.

[…] Paypal Currency Exchange – USD to CAD Workaround – Thanks to Sustainable Personal Finance if you live in Canada, you won’t have to pay for Paypal currency exchange fees. Paypal is an American company, but a great way to collect fees from advertisers, customers and clients. However, if you live in Canada, you have to pay an additional currency exchange fee on top of the regular Paypal fees. However, SPF has come up with a work around….check it out! […]

[…] have to convert USD to CAD. Sustainable finance has addressed the problem, and presented a great workaround. Great solution if I do say so myself, and hopefully everyone takes advantage of it while they […]

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